Felix’s home debut in the press and web
Jon Paul Morosi, in the PI, with his recap.
It should tell you a little something about the general state of affairs at Safeco that the most anticipated baseball event all season begat scores of empty seats in the right and left field corners.
There’s also a USSM mention in there, which is cool.
Corey Brock, in the News-Tribune, has “King for a day”
It’s not enough that 19-year-old Seattle rookie pitcher Felix Hernandez can throw his fastball 98 mph, although that alone makes him pretty special.
It’s everything else that Hernandez did Tuesday – from the wicked change-ups he threw to his off-the-table curveball to his refined poise at such a young age – that makes him unique.
Finnigan, in the Seattle Times: “Hernandez pitches gem in home debut” is paired with Larry Stone, reporting from the visiting clubhouse.
“Poise? I don’t think we’re talking about poise here,” Gardenhire said. “I think we’re talking about a 97 mile an hour fastball with a curveball from hell. I think you can overlook the poise part. Let’s just say great stuff.”
My pal (and yours, if you’ve met him) Jonah Keri wrote up yesterday’s game as his Game of the Week column on Baseball Prospectus. And it’s free! Free! So check that out.
Seth Stohs has a detailed breakdown of what Hernandez threw and when (no permalink? Man, that link’s going to age badly)
And for your picture needs, Adriot linked cool game pics in comments yesterday. (Please note that’s not USSM-space… don’t sweat the bandwith). I’m sure that having been so generous with his efforts, these pics will now be copied all across the internet to be used as desktops, and the basis for fan web pages. Sorry, dude.
Comments
65 Responses to “Felix’s home debut in the press and web”
has anyone checked this guy’s birth certificate?? We don’t want another Danny Almonte on our hands.
has anyone checked this guy’s birth certificate?? We don’t want another Danny Almonte on our hands.
Post-9/11 immigration rules require a real, valid birth certificate before one can be issued any sort of visa into this country.
So yes, he’s 19.
I just happened to be scanning BP’s “VORP for rookie pitchers” rankings (I wanted to see what Gustavo Chacin’s chances were of being RoY), and I noticed that King Felix is already ranked 23 on the chart.
There’s also a USSM mention in there, which is cool.
USS Mariner plug courtesy of yours truly, Unkle Rusty (the Russ Queen quoted in the article). That guy Morosi is pretty cool, he spoke highly of your work for the PI, Derek. Derek, were you at the game with a Snelling jersey last night, sitting behind home plate?
Yup. I think 124, row 35.
Derek was down with the peons, while I was up in the high-rent district!
Bah, the originals aren’t on there, so if anyone wants larger than 800 pixels wide they’ll have to contact me. Then I can set my extravagant demands.
I have many more at home of varying quality, some which aren’t half bad. If I get around to it I’ll see if there are others worth uploading later this week.
Derek, I think the permalink for Seth’s page is:
http://www.sethspeaks.net/081005.htm
My pictures came out fairly awful, and are mostly from the warmup, but if anyone wants to see them, I uploaded them here.
That shot of the crowd behind the bullpen was taken at approximately 6:20pm. It just got crazier from there. Sorry I didn’t hang around longer to chat, Derek — you should do a King Street gathering again sometime before another King start. It was cool.
19…20…22…whatever the age, it’s still just slightly different shades of special.
If anyone saw the FoxSports telecast when they showed the simulcam of his slider and his fastball, thrown consecutively to Justin Morneau, it was a great great little feature. His arm motion was IDENTICAL. You couldn’t even tell it was a simulcam. Lots of luck trying to pick up what the pitch is out of that!
11: You mean the curve, right? He never threw the slider.
Does anyone remember the latin phrase someone suggested as a Felix slogan? I can’t find it… I think I want to get some t-shirts made.
I’d actually rather that he be 23 than 19, in some ways. It’s those years, from 19 to 23, that are just scary from an injury perspective. Hopefully, the Ms realize that….
I think the pitch that they said was his curve in the simulcam was actually his change. The curve is about the same speed but bigger. The change looks like a slurve or a slider or a splitter. Really crazy action on it.
13: El Cartuela? (The Badass)
It was the “what the heck was that” pitch (or did Jonah actually say “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”)
This settles the fact that when I get to Hawaii I am getting satelite so I can watch this kid pitch. From the looks if they can get some good players in the winter they have the potential to make a run. Just wish I could catch them live.
11-12: It was probably the change-up. I enjoyed my time at the park so much, I watched part of the game again on TIVO and the slimulcam I saw was the change-up. His change does have a little slider type movement on it and from what I have heard, some non-Seattle announcers have referred to it as a slider.
FYI… this might have been said already, but TV Listings show last night’s game being repeated on FSN at Noon Today.
Sorry 15 for the repeat: You type much faster than I do.
David,
that wasn’t it. It was something using either rex or regalis.
“Ultima Ratio Regum”
Oh, the LATIN phrase. I thought he said Spanish.
Thanks Derek… I’ve been banging my head against the wall all morning.
I owe you a beer.
Hey Foxsports.com used King Felix in its fantasy recap of the game.
Try this on Wikipedia: type King Felix into the search box, and hit Go.
Wikipedia might be a good place for the best of adroit’s many excellent photos, if he’s willing to waive reproduction rights on them. They’ve got plenty of bandwidth.
(One day I’ll remember to answer that Yes/No question first time)
If he’s willing to release one or two with a copyleft license, it would be great. I was planning to ask him if he’d consider that.
When was ‘King Felix’ coined?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/184053_felix29.html
Felix’s debut is definitely the best moment of the year. Finally some light is shining on the Mariners for next season and beyond. I can’t wait until they have the Hernandez jerseys available at Safeco.
PS (That link wasn’t an answer)
After seeing Felix point gratefully at Wiki after the last out, then some of the newspaper recaps today, plus the fact that Wiki is starting over Torrealba, I’m starting to wonder if the M’s will try to re-sign Wiki (at a lower salary, presumably), to be Felix’s personal catcher next year. Or maybe even as the starter.
I hope Jeff Clement makes a fast rise thru the minors and is the starting catcher sometime next year.
I always get a kick out of Wikipedia — not only is it highly useful, it’s so delightfully random.
#30 – Dave or Derek could probably track down the answer, and may have already given it in a previous thread. The reporter was pretty clearly aware of USS Mariner, since he talks about fans calling him King Felix or Kid K at a point when most fans hadn’t really heard of him.
I don’t know where the Kid K reference comes from. Did that get used here too at some point? It’s less useful as a nickname because it’s not durable (imagine calling him that at 35). And we’ve already had The Kid, no point in recycling the same theme.
Since no one responded to this comment (a new thread began on Felix at about the same time), I’m trying again:
Even before yesterday’s start, Dave called Felix one of the best pitchers in the American League. If Felix has anything close to this kind of success next year, at what point do the Mariners begin to think about pre-empting free agency? How long should a long-term deal with a kid pitcher be, given all the risks? If he turns out to be a viable all-star pitcher, how many years do you keep paying him on club-control contracts? The “service-time†argument is moot already for this year, but is it going to be put permanently to rest by his performance, which might force a contract long before free agency enters the picture? When would or should that be? Assuming that last night was just foretaste of what is to come, of course.
King Felix, 7/2003:
http://ussmariner.com/?p=373
#37… he could blow out his arm halfways through next year. I think future contracts will happen but it’s way too early to speculate. My guess is he plays out next year at the minimum and the M’s might start talks with his agent sometime in the middle of next season, but even that might be way too early.
There’s no reason to even think about locking him up until after 2007. The next two years are basically free, where he has no leverage and the M’s can pay him whatever they want. Let him pitch the next two seasons on assigned contracts, then evaluate what you have. If he’s healthy and starting all-star games, buy out his free agency. If he’s missing starts here or there and has a declining strikeout rate, go year to year.
Contract-wise, how the M’s dealt with ARod might be instructive. Alex played through his first 2 years at the assigned contract (minimum) while he wasn’t arbitration eligible. Then he signed for $10 mill for the next 10 years, which gave the club salary certitude through his arbitration years.
Oops… $10 million for 4 years on Alex’s first contract.
Dave and Rusty:
Thanks. I’m just trying to get started on some benchmarks, and you’ve outlined some sensible ones. Now if the team just could have persuaded Alex to sign one more time, or for more years the first time . . . If you are correct, Rusty, the contract only ran to the end of the arbitration period (6 years?) which means they really didn’t make a dent in the free agency period. Unless I misundertand the process.
Thank you adroit.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Panev/kingfelix2.jpg
One problem with the ARod deal was that it ran concurrent to Griffey’s. In the end, it didn’t matter because both wanted to be elsewhere (geographically, in Griffey’s case, and monetarily, in ARod’s).
I think the M’s might have been ready to buy out some of ARod’s free agency if Boras had been willing to let them. I forget how Griffey’s early contracts played out, but I seem to remember them doing it then.
But generally I agree that there’s no point in buying out arbitration until it’s only a year away, after the player has already been healthy and good for two years. At most, perhaps Felix’s contract while under club control should include the All-Star/award bonuses that more established players get, as a way for the front office to say “we like you” and as an incentive for him to do well.
#46: Yeah, it seems they might do well to sprinkle a little sugar along the way to prepare for the deal to come. This is all hypothetical, but no one since ARod has come along from the system who even piques the discussion. Exciting times.
Does anyone know who his agent is? I assume he has one.
I think we should sign him to a long term deal now, while we have the leverage. He might like to get 8 million a year (or less) instead of 300 grand for the next couple of years, instead of waiting for 15 or 20 million at a later date.
I’m not happy at all with how my pics turned out from yesterday, but I was able to do a composite of his pitching motion out of one burst:
http://flickr.com/photos/dylanw/32966650/
It’s great to be excited about Felix, but projecting huge contracts to him is not useful. We have him for 6 years, minimum. Considering all that can happen in those 6 years there’s no reason for the M’s to risk a huge long term contract at this point. Felix and his agent aren’t going to get upset by such treatment because it would happen to them no matter where they played. Well… except maybe the Phillies where Ed Wade has been known to give young players foolish contracts.
I
no idea what happened to that last comment…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v737/DawgPacPBH/kf.jpg
38, History… I think it would make a nice link on the sidebar.
#46: Yeah, it seems they might do well to sprinkle a little sugar along the way to prepare for the deal to come.
Studies done by teams haven’t shown that there’s any benefit to this: paying your players the minimum doesn’t make them any more or less difficult to deal with compared to someone who gets (say) 50, 100k over the minimum, even as that increases each of the years.
Now, of course, generalities don’t always apply, blah blah blah, but Felix got a huge chunk to sign and he can look forward to a truly massive free agent payday if he stays healthy. $10-100k a year isn’t going to make or break things.
I’m not surprised that teams have studied the issue, but how does one measure and define “more or less difficult to deal with” for the purposes of such a study? The issue seems too fuzzy for a study to show anything definitive either way.
Felix is already quite wealthy in the context of the society he comes from, very true. What I had in mind was not going over the minimum, which I agree is unlikely to make a difference, but focusing on incentive bonuses. I seem to remember Griffey once making a point of letting people know that he wasn’t getting the bonuses his fellow All-Stars were getting. If nothing else, it takes away a weapon in the negotiation-by-media game.
“Ultima Ratio Regumâ€Â
Brilliant.
As far as the shirts go, there’s gotta be a way to work in a graphic of a cannon shooting out a baseball. The Ms would corner the French history buff fanbase immediately.
There’a photo dump from last night’s game here
http://lefty10.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album02
I haven’t yet had time to go into the editing software with the photos so they’re quality is a little spotty at this point. I’ll try to clean them up especially when viewed at max size.
Cleveland got a lot of credit some years ago for signing their young players to long term contracts before they got real expensive.
Of course they didn’t get a championship out of it, but maybe that was the manager’s fault. Who was their manager back then, anyway?
And this from BILLY-BALL:
THIS SHOULD MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER
Baseball has a new star on its horizon and his name is Felix Hernandez. Hernandez won his first home start for the Mariners last night defeating the Twins, 1-0. “He was all that, everything he was billed to be,” Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said, “… and then some.”
“On the first pitch, I called a two-seamer [sinker] and it just exploded on me and I dropped it,” catcher Wiki Gonzalez said. “I peeked at the radar reading and it said 97. I thought, ‘Wow, a two-seamer that hard.’ The next pitch, I dropped that, too.â€Â
In Hernandez’ 8 innings he gave up just 5 hits, struck out 6 and walked none. Of his 94 pitches, 69 were for strikes. His record is now 1-1 with an ERA of 0.69.
That quote John D. posted makes me wonder: Is there any pitcher who throws a sinker as hard as Felix?
Wiki explaining how the King’s pitches break down so hard is cool. Wiki dropping those balls as a catcher… not so cool.
Of course they didn’t get a championship out of it, but maybe that was the manager’s fault. Who was their manager back then, anyway?
Dude, they got two of them, 1995 and 1997.
#62 –
I think #58 may have meant the World Series, not the AL championship. At least that’s how I read it.
In direct proportion to our newfound happiness… has anyone noticed what is passing for a rotation in Yankeeland? Aaron Small pitched today, and actually appears to have pitched well. Not exactly the kind of guy one expects to hear about taking the bump for the pinstripes. Tomorrow they are throwing out Scott Proctor. No wonder they tried to work a deal for Jamie.
“Costanza! Who the hell is Scott Proctor? Where is Big George’s Calzone”
I think #58 may have meant the World Series, not the AL championship. At least that’s how I read it.
Gotta be specific.